When communicating with your prospect, your main concern should be getting their attention. Your headline is therefore a crucial part of any advertisement or mailer you send out - much like we make up over 90% of our opinion of someone in the first few seconds of meeting them, your headline is the smiling face that should make your prospect think; 'Hello, what's this?' rather than, 'Ugh, more junk mail.'

So how do you know what headline to use? I always suggest that you test different headlines. Your prospect will tell you which one works best because that will be the ad that gets the highest number of responses. Once you have their attention it is important that your text does not ruin your strong headline. If you have a high quality but expensive product, explain to the prospect why your product is the best on the market.

If you haven't got a strong offer then you need to create one. I often add in special reports and ebooks to ad value to my product. You could do something similar. You could even create a joint venture with another company to offer money off voucher for their service or products. This will cost you nothing but give a high-perceived value.

A very cheap and effective method is to include a risk free guarantee - if you can increase the guarantee, you minimise the risk to the prospect. Let's face it, most returns take place within the first few weeks, by offering an extended guarantee you have something very strong to boast about. The concept of offer risk free trials or long guarantee's works, there's no reason why you should not exploit this concept.

When it comes to wording your advertisement, bear in mind who you're talking to, not just a name and an address, but a person, someone with a family, someone running a business, someone with money to spare, someone on a budget, everyone's different. Be sure that you understand your demographic before you begin to write, so you can shape your text to fit their understanding.